Month: October 2005

As hunting season nears, many wildlife officials across
the upper Midwest are asking hunters to line up their sights on snouts and tusks, as well as antlers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull explains:

Transcript

As hunting season nears, many wildlife officials across the upper
Midwest are asking hunters to line up their sights on snouts and
tusks, as well as antlers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull explains:

In Wisconsin alone, feral pigs are roaming through 27 counties. The
animals are damaging crops and hurting native ecosystems, and have
even killed small deer. And since an adult sow can wean up to a
dozen piglets a year, their numbers are hard to control.

Bryan Woodbury is a wildlife damage specialist with the Wisconsin DNR.
He says hunters should feel free to bag any feral pigs they meet – but
they should first make sure they’re not someone’s livestock.

“They’re not the distinct pink color, or the black and white style –
they tend to be darker color with longer hair, the boar may have a tusk
that you can see… they will pose a threat if you get up close to them
and tease them or threaten them in any way, they may do a charge or try
to fight back just like any other wild animal would try to do. But
their main instinct is to run away.”

Woodbury adds that feral pigs should taste just as good – if not
better – than those on the farm. Besides Wisconsin, many other
states are having problems with feral pigs, including Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

For the GLRC, I’m Brian Bull.

Related Links

Raw sewage from urban areas is a big source of pollution
in the Great Lakes. And a lot of people are fighting over how best to keep it out. Now, the Milwaukee area’s sewer district is once again the focus of a bitter legal fight. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports on the dispute:

Transcript

Raw sewage from urban areas is a big source of pollution in the Great Lakes. And a lot of people
are fighting over how best to keep it out. Now, the Milwaukee area’s sewer district is once again
the focus of a bitter legal fight. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports on the
dispute:

Last week, Wisconsin’s Attorney General filed suit against the Milwaukee Metropolitan
Sewerage district. The suit seeks extensive upgrades to keep raw sewage out of Wisconsin’s
waterways.

Last year, spring storms overwhelmed local sewers and the district dumped millions of gallons of
raw sewage into rivers and Lake Michigan. Sewer district spokesperson, Bill Graffin, says the
lawsuit seeks the impossible – a perfect sewer system.

“You can never ever say that you will eliminate all overflows, because you never know what
Mother Nature’s going to throw at you. If you design your system to the biggest storm you’ve
ever had, there’s always the possibility that a bigger storm’s going to come along.”

The district contends it’s already overwhelmed by current upgrade projects, which may cost
nearly a billion dollars. Many of those projects are required by previous lawsuits.

The Attorney General says the district must improve, and it should either raise additional money
itself or seek state assistance.

Transcript

Environmental issues may slow the re-development of some of the military bases that are
scheduled to close over the next several months. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck
Quirmbach reports:

The defense department says many of the military bases to be shut down may have leaking fuel
tanks, construction debris, heavy metal contamination and other problems. The department’s
office of economic adjustment works with communities to sort through the long list of legal,
financial and environmental issues. These issues must be solved before a base can be re-developed.

“The federal government can’t transfer the property until it’s been remediated so that there’s no
danger to human health or the environment.”

But Boese cautions that the feds typically only pay for clean up to so-called similar use standards.
If the bases are re-used for things such as homes or day care centers more clean-up would be
needed… and those costs could be passed on to someone else.

For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Wildlife officials are working to stop the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease. The disease is contagious among deer and elk and attacks the brains of infected animals. Officials are trying to keep deer and elk hunters from driving carcasses across state lines. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports:

Transcript

Wildlife officials are working to stop the spread of Chronic Wasting disease.
The disease is contagious among deer and elk and attacks the brains of infected
animals. Officials are trying to keep deer and elk hunters from driving carcasses
across state lines. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports:

So far chronic wasting disease, or CWD, has been found in wild deer in Wisconsin,
Illinois, and New York. Thomas Courchaine hopes to keep it that way.
He’s with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. He says hunters
returning from neighboring states often bring in whole deer carcasses for meat
processing or taxidermy. Courchaine says by law people can only bring in de-boned meat, antlers
or hides:

“We ran into a problem last year, a lot of Wisconsin folks bringing deer up to be processed into
Michigan. And this is a Michigan law, it’s in our digest, but if a person hunts in Wisconsin there’s
not a good way for him to realize it’s against the law unless he takes the time and effort to call
people in Michigan.”

Courchaine says violators could pay up to 500 dollars and spend up to 90 days in jail. CWD has
not yet been found to be contagious to humans, but officials warn against eating infected meat.

For the GLRC, I’m Brian Bull.

Related Links

Thirty years ago this month (November 10th), the iron ore carrier the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. 29 men died. The lake carrier was caught in one of the worst storms recorded on the Great Lakes. In the years since the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson has talked with those connected with the ship:

Transcript

Thirty years ago this month (November 10th), the iron ore carrier, the Edmund Fitzgerald, sank in
Lake Superior. 29 men died. The lake carrier was caught in one of the worst storms recorded on
the Great Lakes. In the years since the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mike Simonson has talked with those connected with the ship:

Like the folk song relates, the November gales came early on Lake Superior in 1975. A storm
more fierce than even the most experienced lake carrier crews had ever seen hit the eastern side
of the lake. That night, Captain Dudley Paquette was shipmaster of the lake carrier Wilfred
Sykes…

“We were really out right in the middle of the lake. Just huge seas, 30-35 foot seas. I was
completely awash and I was on a super ship. I was registering 70, 75 knots steady with gusts to
100. Huge seas, I was completely awash. Water was flying over the top of my bridge.”

Like the carrier Wilfred Sykes, the Edmund Fitzgerald was a big ship, but early in the night the
captain saw ominous signs of trouble. The topside fence rails had snapped. The vents were torn
off. The radar was out. And the Edmund Fitzgerald’s Captain, Ernest McSorley had all the bilge
pumps on, trying to keep the ship from swamping.

Thom Holden is the curator of the Army Corps of Engineers Marine Museum. He says Captain
McSorley was in radio contact with Captain Jesse Cooper of the nearest ship, the Arthur
Anderson.

“The topside damage was an earlier report. After suffering this damage that Captain McSorley
did contact Cooper and ask him to shadow him down the lake. It was really several hours later
that what could be the last transmission from the Fitzgerald was received. Essentially Captain
Cooper or the mate asked McSorley how he was doing, how the vessel was riding. He said
‘We’re holding our own, going along like an old shoe.'”

In an interview from his retirement home in Florida, Arthur Anderson Captain Jesse Cooper said
the memory of that night still haunts him. He says Captain McSorley didn’t let on that his ship
and crew were in danger.

“I think he knew he was in trouble but he couldn’t spread the word because it would panic the
crew. (Simonson): How do you think he knew he was in trouble? (Cooper) What the hell would
you think if you had a hole in your bottom and were taking in more water than you could pump
out?”

At 7:10 that evening, the Fitzgerald disappeared from radar as it sailed into a snow squall only a
few miles from the safety of Whitefish Bay.

“My gut feeling was I knew she was gone when I couldn’t see her on the scope. Turning around,
I hated the thought of going back out in that sea.”

Radio communication from that night was recorded by the Coast Guard at Sault St. Marie
Michigan. The Coast Guard was asking captains to turn back into the storm and search for the
Fitzgerald. You’ll hear a distressed Captain Cooper answer the call.

“(Coast Guard:) Think there’s any possibility that you could turn around do any searching, over?’
(Cooper) ‘Oh God, I don’t know. That sea out there is tremendously large. If you want me to, I
can but I’m not going to be making any time. I’ll be lucky to do two or three miles per hour going
back out that way, over.’ (Coast Guard:) It looks like with the information we have that it is fairly
certain that the Fitzgerald went down. We’re talking now a matter of life and death and looking
for survivors that might be in life rafts or in the water. We can only ask the masters to do their
best without hazarding their vessels.'”

The U.S. Coast Guard rescue vessel Woodrush had left the Duluth port but it took 21 hours to
arrive on scene. Captain Jimmy Hobaugh says a life ring from the Fitzgerald popped up as they
arrived.

“Of course we searched for the three full days and it was rougher than you can imagine. No
matter how I turned the ship, we were taking green water over the top. If there had been someone
there, I’m positive that my crew was good enough that we would’ve got ’em.”

None of the men’s bodies were recovered.

Among the crew of 29 was Third Mate Michael Armagost of Iron River, Wisconsin. His widow
Janice says the families of the 29 men who went down with the Edmund Fitzgerald struggle with
their loss…

“Nobody realizes that there are survivors. I mean, my kids’ father is on that ship and my
husband’s on that ship. And people just think of it as a shipwreck that happened so long ago, and
it’s not.”

The families of the crew of the ship now say all they want is the final resting place of their loved
ones to remain undisturbed by divers. Only the bell of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was
recovered and placed in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, Michigan ten
years ago.

For the GLRC, I’m Mike Simonson.

Related Links

Installing vast networks of underground drains, known as tiles, is a common practice on farms throughout the country. Farmers can get their machines onto the fields sooner, and crops grow better when their roots aren't wet. This field, near Sherwood, OH, was once part of the Old Black Swamp. (Photo by Mark Brush)

The basic design of this trench digging machine has remained unchanged for more than 100 years. Instead of black plastic pipe, workers used to install short sections of clay tile pipe. These underground pipes are known as "farm tiles." (Photo by Mark Brush)

Lynn Davis now runs his family's farm tiling business. His grandfather started it close to a hundred years ago, and Lynn still does work for many of the same families his grandfather worked for. (Photo by Mark Brush)

One of the Ten Threats is the loss of wetlands. A lot of the wetlands of the Great Lakes were
turned into cropland – farmland. But before farmers could work the fields in the nation’s bread
basket, they first had to drain them. So thousands of miles of ditches and trenches were dug to
move water off the land. Losing millions of acres of wetlands meant losing nature’s water filter
for the lakes. Reporter Mark Brush reports… these days some farmers are restoring those wet
places:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/10/brush_103105.mp3

Transcript

We’ve been bringing you stories about Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. On today’s report, the
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham introduces us to a story about how farmers are
getting involved in restoring some of the natural landscape:

One of the Ten Threats is the loss of wetlands. A lot of the wetlands of the Great Lakes were
turned into cropland – farmland. But before farmers could work the fields in the nation’s bread
basket, they first had to drain them. So thousands of miles of ditches and trenches were dug to
move water off the land. Losing millions of acres of wetlands meant losing nature’s water filter
for the lakes. Reporter Mark Brush reports… these days some farmers are restoring those wet
places:

We’re standing in the middle of a newly-harvested corn field in northwest Ohio. This area used
to be wet. It was part of the old Black Swamp – one of the biggest wetland areas in the country.
The Swamp stretched 120 miles across northwest Ohio and into Indiana. It filtered a lot of water
that eventually made its way into Lake Erie. And it provided habitat for all kinds of wildlife.

Today, the Black Swamp is gone… It was drained and turned into farmland.

“Is it o.k. to go?”

“Yeah, go.”

(sound of trenching machine starting up)

Lynn Davis and his crew are cutting a trench into the earth. The trench is about a half a mile
long and five feet deep. Workers trail behind the machine feeding black, plastic pipe into the
trench.

The underground pipe will drain excess water to a nearby ditch.

Davis says these drains help the farmer grow more crops. It’s a common practice that’s been
going on for more than a hundred years. Farmers can get their machines onto the field sooner,
which makes for a longer growing season. And crops grow better when their roots aren’t wet.

Years ago, wetlands were considered a bad thing – places that stood in the way of farmland
development – and places where diseases spread.

The federal government actually paid people to drain them. And by the end of the 20th century
more than 170,000 square miles of wetlands were drained.

Lynn Davis’s family has been in this business for close to a hundred years. Davis admits that his
family helped drain the Black Swamp. But he says much of what’s been done can be reversed:

“You know, there is no question that this was of course one of the largest natural wetlands in the
country. And what we’re doing here was responsible for eliminating that wetland. Now what
we’ve done is relatively simple to reverse. If for some reason it was decided that we don’t want to
farm and live in this area any more, why we can put it back to a swamp real quick.”

And some of that is happening today.

Instead of paying people to drain wetlands, the federal government pays people to restore them.

(crickets)

We’ve driven about fifty miles north to where Bill Daub lives. He was hired by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife service to find suitable land for restoration. And he’s restored well over 500 wetland
areas in the fifteen years he’s been doing it.

Daub says nature bounces back. He says every time he’s broken an old drainage pipe, dormant
seeds of wetland plants stored in the soil popped open:

“What’s amazing with the wetlands is that you see all these cattails, and wetland plants growing
in here – that stuff was in a seed bank, even though they were growing corn here, there was a seed
bank of wetlands species, waiting for water.”

The federal government will pay a farmer to take marginal cropland out of production under the
Wetlands Reserve Program. And Daub says it’s worth the money:

“Every one of these wetlands is a purification system. The water that finally leaves this wetland
has been purified through the living organisms in the wetland.”

(natural sound)

Janet Kaufman lives just down the road from Bill Daub, and eight years ago, she had a crew dig
up an old drainage pipe on her farm. These days, on the back end of her property there’s a pond
with a tall willow tree draping over the water:

“So this wasn’t here before?”

“Not at all, not at all! I mean it’s just shocking. And when the backhoe hit that it was like a
geyser, the water just poured out it just flew up in the air. They had to crunch it shut. I mean the
quantity of water that flows underground is unbelievable unless by chance you see it like that.”

Kaufman says a lot of her neighbors have been signing up to restore wetlands on their property.
The wetter areas aren’t that good for crops… and with the government offering money to let
nature take its course… it makes financial sense for the farmers.

But because a lot of the old Black Swamp area is good for farming, it’s not likely that we’ll see
huge swaths returned to wetlands.

But even the restoration of a fraction of the wetlands will help improve the health of the Great
Lakes.

This side of a wetland in Winous Point is protected by a man-made dike. (Photo by Julie Grant)

The unprotected side has little remaining vegetation. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Among the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is the loss of thousands of square miles of wetlands along the lakes. From Superior to Ontario and on up the St. Lawrence Seaway, we’ve lost some of the most important wildlife habitat along the edges of the lakes. For example, 200 years ago, much of the southern shore of Lake Erie was a huge swamp. Most of those wetlands have been drained and filled since European settlement. Julie Grant reports on efforts to maintain the little bit that remains:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/10/grant_103105.mp3

Transcript

In our next report in the series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes, we’re going to hear about changes to a large area that drains into the lakes. Our guide through the series is the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham:

Among the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is the loss of thousands of square miles of wetlands along the lakes. From Superior to Ontario and on up the St. Lawrence Seaway, we’ve lost some of the most important wildlife habitat along the edges of the lakes. For example, 200 years ago, much of the southern shore of Lake Erie was a huge swamp. Most of those wetlands have been drained and filled since European settlement. Julie Grant reports on efforts to maintain the little bit that remains:

Researchers from the Cleveland area park district have been driving hours to get here to this bit of swamp nearly every day since last spring. Biologist Rick Spence and his partner wade through two feet of boot-sucking mud. They’re looking for turtles. Blanding’s turtles, to be exact. With a distinctive bright yellow chin and throat, it’s designated as a ‘species of special concern’ in Ohio…

“The Blanding’s originally were found in this area in the southern portion of Lake Erie, along this basin area. And so there’s a lot of the Blanding’s in here. It doesn’t get any better than this. We have nothing like this really around the Cleveland area that I know of.”

This area is the 150 year-old Winous Point Marsh Conservancy and Duck Hunting Club. It’s the largest privately owned coastal wetland in Ohio. It’s a thin strip of marsh that runs eight and a half miles along the shore.

Roy Kroll has been Executive Director of the Duck Hunting Club for more than twenty years. He keeps busy balancing the needs of researchers, biology classes, and reporters.

Kroll takes me onto the marsh in a wooden boat. He uses an old-fashioned pole to push us through water that’s only a couple of inches deep. It’s slow and quiet. He stops and uses the pole to slap the water for a call and response with migratory birds. (slap) He can hear who’s hiding in the cattails, arrowhead, and other emergent wetland plants…

(Kroll slaps water twice, birds respond)

“Well, looks like the teal have left and the rail are here.”

Kroll says the 4,500 acre marsh harbors over 100,000 waterfowl, mostly ducks, during November’s peak migration. There aren’t many places like this left on the Lake Erie coastline. More than 90 percent of the region’s wetlands have been drained. Most of that was done in the mid-1800s.

The area was once known as the Great Black Swamp. It stretched from Lake Erie all the way to Indiana. Much of it was under a dense canopy of hardwood trees. Kroll says it was a great system to filter river waters entering the lake. But European settlers and land speculators cut down most of the trees, dug ditches and straightened stream channels to move water quickly off the land. They built roads and transformed the swamp into rich, productive farm fields.

“You have to put yourself in the time period. Rightfully so, that was considered progress. And now we have to look back and say, well, yeah, it was progress and now it looks like it’s not progress. And if we’re not going to eliminate all these wetlands, we’re going to have to take some proactive measures to do it.”

Even at Winous Point, some of the wetlands are in poor condition. Standing on a man-made dike we look one way and see all kinds of plants: cattails, duckweed, and lily pads. But look to the side that’s not protected by the dike, and there’s no vegetation. Hand-drawn maps from the 1800s show a diversity of plants here, but now it looks like an open bay…

“What we’re looking at now is an open water wetland. And again, with no plants, we don’t have the structure for fish, invertebrates, and even plankton and algae to colonize on plant stems. It’s nowhere near as productive.”

Kroll says it’s not nearly as productive as the protected area. He says high lake levels, invasive carp, and pollution running off the land and into the rivers that drain into the lake have all made it tough for marsh vegetation to survive. Without plants, Kroll says the wetland can’t clean water running off the land…into the lake. He says it’s unrealistic to expect a short band of remnant wetlands to do the job of a hundreds of square miles of swamp forest.

“The key is to start at the upstream far upstream head of the watershed and begin restoring wetlands from there down to here.”

There are some efforts to re-store small parts of the Great Black Swamp. But Kroll says it’s also important to protect the little bit of the original coastal wetlands that are still left.

For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Great Lakes coastal wetlands filter water, give lots of wildlife a place to live and help prevent erosion. These wetlands are also greatly responsible for feeding the fish of the Great Lakes. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The Ten Threats to the Great Lakes were identified for us by experts from all over the region.
Again and again they stressed that the shores and wetlands along the lakes were critical to the
well-being of the lakes and the life in them. Great Lakes coastal wetlands filter water, give lots of
wildlife a place to live and help prevent erosion. But the coastal wetlands are also greatly
responsible for feeding the fish of the Great Lakes. Biologists are finding that when people try to
get rid of the wetlands between them and their view of the lake, it hurts the fish populations.
Reporter Chris McCarus takes us to where life begins in the lakes:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/10/mccarus_103105.mp3

Transcript

We’ve been bringing you the series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. One of the
keys to the health of the lakes is the connection between the lakes and the land.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham is our guide through the series:

The Ten Threats to the Great Lakes were identified for us by experts from all over the region.
Again and again they stressed that the shores and wetlands along the lakes were critical to the
well-being of the lakes and the life in them. Great Lakes coastal wetlands filter water, give lots of
wildlife a place to live and help prevent erosion. But the coastal wetlands are also greatly
responsible for feeding the fish of the Great Lakes. Biologists are finding that when people try to
get rid of the wetlands between them and their view of the lake, it hurts the fish populations.
Reporter Chris McCarus takes us to where life begins in the lakes:

(sound of walking in water)

About a dozen researchers have come to Saginaw Bay off of Lake Huron. They walk from the
front yard of a cottage into some tall grass and black mud out back. The coastal wetland is wide
here.

Don Uzarski is a professor from Grand Valley State University. He wants to see just how many
different kinds of microorganisms live in this wetland. He asks a colleague to dip a fine mesh net
into the muck.

“Why don’t you give us your best scoop there…”

The net’s contents are poured into a tray. The water and muck is pushed aside and tiny animals
are revealed. None of them is any bigger than an inch.

“There are a lot organisms right there. That’s a lot of fish food. Lot of water boatmen. We have
scuds swimming through here. We have snails. Probably a bloodworm. I don’t see it. But the
red thing.”

Uzarski says this is a healthy patch of wetland. It’s where Great Lakes life begins.

“The whole community starts here. And we’re talking about everything from the birds and fish
and all the things that people tend to care about more. But without this stuff we don’t have
anything.”

These microorganisms are at the bottom of the food chain. Lake trout, walleye and salmon are at
the top. But this natural order has been disturbed by humans. Only parts of the wetland are able
to work as nature intended. The bugs, snails and worms are supposed to be everywhere here. But
Uzarski says they’re not.

“Look at if we take 20 steps over there we’re not going to find the same thing. It’s gonna be
gone. And where’s that coming from? It’s coming from these disturbed edges. Which were
disturbed by? It was the spoils from dredging out that ditch right there.”

The dredging material is piled along the edge… a bit like a dike. Uzarski says that’s one of the
three main threats to coastal wetlands.

The dikes stop the natural flow of water. Farm and lawn fertilizers, sediment and chemical
pollution are not filtered out when they run off the land. Dikes also stop the water from carrying
food for fish out into the lake… and in the other direction, water can’t bring oxygen from the lake
into the wetlands. They’re at risk of becoming stagnant pools.

A second threat to the wetlands is alien invasive plants. Ornamental plants intended for gardens
have escaped. Phragmites, purple loosestrife, and European water milfoil among others all choke
out the native plants that help make the wetland systems work.

But… the greatest threat to the coastal wetlands is construction. We’ve been building homes,
buildings and parking lots right over the top of some of the Great Lakes’ most critical wetlands.

Sam Washington is Executive Director of the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the state’s
largest hunting and fishing advocacy group. He says we need healthy wetlands if we want to
keep fishing the Great Lakes.

“If we didn’t have wetlands, if we didn’t have the ability to regenerate the bottom foods in the
food cycle of these animals, we wouldn’t have the big fish that people go out in the Great Lakes
to catch everyday. They just wouldn’t be there.”

Washington says the way to fix the problem is easy… but it will require us to do something that
comes really hard…

“The best thing human beings can do for wetlands, even though we really believe we know how
to fix everything, is just to leave ’em alone.”

Sam Washington gets support from the biologists who tromp out into the wetlands. They say
we’ve got to protect the whole food chain… so we should leave wetlands alone and just let nature
do its job.

For the GLRC, I’m Chris McCarus.

Related Links

A new report by a forest protection group says the increase
in logging in National Forests shows no signs of slowing. The uptick in logging is also happening in the Great Lakes region. The National Forest Protection Alliance says the U.S. Forest Service needs to re-evaluate its mission. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton has this
report:

Transcript

A new report by a forest protection group says the increase in logging
in National Forests shows no signs of slowing. The uptick in logging
is also happening in the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes region. The
National Forest Protection Alliance says the U.S. Forest Service needs
to re-evaluate its mission. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy
Samilton has this report:

Logging companies are going after more acres in National Forests
because trees have regenerated after the large-scale clear-cutting of a
hundred years ago. But Jake Kreilick of the National Forest Protection
Alliance says the logging is a net loss for taxpayers, because the U.S.
Forest Service is heavily subsidizing it by building roads to get the
trees out. And Kreilick says it’s unnecessary – because lumber
companies have more domestic and global sources for wood than ever
before.

“The federal government does not need to be in the logging business any
more.”

But logging companies say with half the nation’s softwood in National
Forests, they do need the wood. They say the Forest Service is doing a
good job in managing the multiple users who rely on National Forests
for recreation, hunting and logging.

Transcript

A new report from the federal government says many of us are
spending a lot of money at or near national wildlife refuges. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

The Interior Department says 37 million people visited National
Wildlife Refuges last year, triggering 1.4 billion dollars
in economic activity. The Department says the spending created almost
25,000 private sector jobs. Larry Wargowsky manages one of the
refuges. He says it’s mainly tourist dollars, not local spending,
that’s fueling the growth.

“That’s very critical… local money doesn’t cycle as much as new money
coming in from visitors into the local economy. It multiplies and
helps everything from the retailers to the motels.”

Wargowsky says unlike some of the national parks, the wildlife refuges
are by and large not in danger of being loved to death. Travel industry
officials say the new report shows eco-tourism is big business.

The Sierra Club says the study provides more reasons not to drill for
oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.